As we search for a fuller understanding of ourselves as human beings, it’s necessary to beware of explanations that reduce us to essentially one thing. On one side, scientific materialism wants to insist that we are nothing more than a highly evolved marvel of organic chemistry. On the other, metaphysical realism says that we are nothing less than an immortal spirit-being on a brief earthly sojourn. Whether we are nothing more or nothing less, each side presumes to reduce to simpler terms the complexity of what makes us human.
If we can set aside our Western penchant for reductionism and take a different approach, a much more interesting picture begins to emerge. In earlier posts I introduced the notion of ‘mental location’ as a vantage point for consciousness in its engagement with reality. Sentient awareness in human beings engages with reality at three distinct realms: (1) a sensory-physical realm at the mental location of the body, (2) an interpersonal realm at the mental location of the ego, and (3) a mystical-intuitive realm at the mental location of the soul.
Such a notion avoids the pitfalls of thinking in terms of parts or pieces, where inevitably one part (body, ego, or soul) is regarded as essential as the others are reduced to mere ‘accidents’ or dismissed outright.
Just a quick check-in with your own experience will verify that you connect with your physical surroundings through your body, with your social situation through your ego, and with the mystery of being through your soul. The convention of regarding these aspects or modes of being as somehow belonging to us (e.g., my body, your soul) encourages the mistake of separating them into parts and property of the self.
In actuality, however, there is no self that has these in its possession, no ‘fourth thing’ beyond the three modes under consideration. If anything, self is the consilient (‘leaping together’) effect of body, ego, and soul working together – and sometimes less cooperatively. In any given moment, you can turn your conscious attention on reality as mediated at the mental location of body, ego, or soul. Sentient awareness is continuously monitoring your engagement with reality at all three simultaneously.
To help with my explanation, I have a diagram that lays out this idea of mental locations or modes of consciousness. You should notice an arcing arrow sweeping across from left to right, which represents the progression of time. In addition, a spatial arrangement displays the three modes and their relative positions with respect to what I name the grounding mystery.
Briefly, ‘grounding mystery’ refers to the depth-structure of our individual existence, descending from the center of self-conscious identity (or ego), deeper into sentient awareness, organismic life, and peering into the abyss (from the perspective of consciousness) of physical matter and quantum energy farthest down (or within). It’s important to understand that the grounding mystery is only within and not outside the forms of existence. Engagement with the grounding mystery is an introspective affair.
As far as the relative position of the three modes with respect to the grounding mystery is concerned, you’ll notice that both body and soul are in direct contact with it whereas ego is slightly elevated in its own separate space. This makes the point that body and soul together constitute what we are as human beings, while ego is who we (think we) are.
The various roles we play in society are not essential to what we are; rather they are masks of identity that make sense only inside the niches and stories of our interpersonal experience. We need to be reminded that our word ‘person’ (and its cognates personal and personality) derives from the Latin persona, referring to the mask an actor wore on a theater stage.
Ego, then, is your mental location of personal identity, which is not natural or essential to what you are but instead is socially constructed as your sense of being somebody (having roles) separate from the roles played by others. The process of individuation gradually detaches this center of identity from the grounding mystery and suspends it inside the performance space of social interactions we call society.
In many early myths, the hero, who on this reading stands for the ego on its adventure of discovery and conquest, must gain escape from some monster or dark force that seeks to devour him. This captures perfectly in metaphor the uneasy relationship of ego to the animal energies of the body from which identity must be ‘saved’ again and again. A portion of consciousness must be liberated from the urgencies and instincts of the body in order to be installed at the new mental location of personal self-conscious identity (ego).
What ‘saves’ personal identity from falling into the body and getting swallowed up are the numerous rules, routines, moral codes, and role-play scripts that validate who you are and keep ego suspended – or, as another way of saying it, that keep you firmly enmeshed in the web of interpersonal and tribal affairs. We can think of these social conventions as programs directing your interaction with others, each one a kind of algorithm (a fixed and closed sequence) of moves, actions, and commands that start and finish a distinct subroutine of the larger performance.
Over time these numerous subroutines of personal and interpersonal engagement became your habit of identity, the second nature of who you are.
In my diagram I have placed the image of a robot (or android: a more humanlike robot) to represent your second nature – the separate center of personal identity (ego) and social codes that dictate your values and direct your behavior in the role-play of society. I’m using this image less in the sense of advanced robotics or artificial intelligence than as something not quite human, human-like but less than human. Your second nature moves and reacts quite automatically according to these encoded programs, closing off or channeling the energies of your first nature (as a primate) into something more conventional and morally compliant.
At the temporal transition from body to ego I’ve put a cube (or box) which symbolizes this process of socialization, where your animal (or first) nature is eventually domesticated in the formation of your personal (or second) nature. The box stands for all the codes that define who you are, determine what you believe, and direct how you behave, as something humanlike but not yet fully human.
At the following transition, between your second and higher natures, you can see that the box is breaking open in a creative release of spiritual energy. In other posts I have explored this event of disillusionment (the liberation from illusion) as the deeper significance of apocalypse in mythology: the imposed veil of meaning falls away and you are finally fully present to what is.
This is what we mean by self-transcendence and moving into a transpersonal mode: you use your center of personal identity as a point of release into a deeper center of awareness (soul), which corresponds outwardly to an enlarged horizon of communion and wholeness.
If we can get past the debate over the metaphysical existence of angels, taking them instead as metaphorical representations of the liberated life – not as self-interested animals or social androids, but as creators, messengers (the literal meaning of angel), and guardians of wisdom – we will come to appreciate their significance as our own higher ideal calling to us.
Interestingly our technology-infatuated generation is more enamored with androids than angels these days, which is no doubt partly due to the irrelevance of literal angels in our scientific cosmology, but may also represent a seduction away from transpersonal to artificial intelligence as our anticipated key to the future.
The automatic life has a certain attraction over one where you need to live with a higher wholeness in mind. In a sense, you can’t be held responsible for the programs driving your thoughts, feelings, and (so-called) choices.
The liberated life is paradoxically about taking responsibility for the world you are creating. Your long adventure as a human being leads to your awakening, waking up from the trance of who you are and living with wide-awake holy intention.
Tracts of Revolution 